LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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REV. EDWIN A. SCHELL, D.D. 



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STAY IN 



Thr High SghooLa 



Go TO GOLaLRGR 



REV. EDWIN A. SCMELL, D.D. 

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CHICAGO: 
ORANSTOK & GURTS. 



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Dedicated with the most Earnest Solicitude 

TO ALL OF THE NeW GENERATION 
WHO SHALL Go TO 

College. 



Copyright, 1895, 
By Cranston & Curts. 



STAY IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 



60 TO COLLEGE. 

A it /HO does not feel solicitude for the 
world's to-morrow, and at times 
anxiousl}' scan the faces of the "rising- 
g-eneration," to discover its heroes and 
sag-es and saints. History has no space on 
its scroll for illiterates, and there are no 
ig-norant saints in the calendar, so that 
whoever is out on the search, whether some 
Jeremiah in the streets of Jerusalem (Jer. 
v: 1), or a Diog^enes with his lantern, would 
better direct his steps at once to the com- 
mon school, next to the home the primary 
fountain of the world's character, to the 
hig-h school, where the process of elimina- 



Stay in the High School 



tion for some is already beg-un, and to the 
college where it is in the final stag-es of 
determination. While fame and fortune 
are girding- on their sandals to visit the 
high school and college, and there confer 
their distinctions, let me play the part of 
Polonius, and address two points of advice 
to those whom they ought to find there. 

(L) Stay in \\\z fjtgl] ScIjooL 

There are many influences adverse to 
3'Our staying in the high school. The only 
one, however, which can justify you for 
one moment in thinking of leaving is that 
your parents must have your aid in the 

support of the family. As 
Help your a rule parents appreciate 

Parents. so highly the advantages 

of an education that they 
will gladly make almost any sacrifice to 
have, you continue in school, and it is cer- 
tain that '.this cannot explain why so many 
leave the high school cou^-se before its com- 



and Go to College. 



pletion. Other reasons are more apt to 
persuade you. 

"You oug-ht to take a busi 
Business ness course." This is urg-ed 

Course a by those who have either 

Waste of personal reasons for wish- 

Time, ing- you to g-o elsewhere, or 

who are incompetent to ad- 
vise. The object of education is mental 
power, and while such studies as penman- 
ship and book-keeping- ma}^ produc^e me- 
chanical skill, they do not educate, and 
have in them no more mental drill than 
wood chopping-. They are practically bene- 
ficial only in the ratio of the g-eneral edu- 
*cation possessed when 3^ou enter them. It 
is absurd to speak of them as practical. A 
real practical course of study must have in 
it science for the discipline of observation 
and judg-ment, lang-uag-e for the develop- 
ment of speech, mathematics for the rea- 
soning- faculty, art and music for refining- 
the taste and elevating- the soul within, 
and thus in due time, and thus onl}^ can 



Stay in the High School. 



yon hope to become practical. Instead of 
the business colleg-e stay in the hig-h school, 
and there — instead of frittering- awa}^ 3'our 
time on work of the sort indicated — take 
the Latin. It is uniformly better taught, 
because taug-ht b}' those of more g-eneral 
culture. It will compel 3'ou to observe 
forms quickly, and thus aid you to prompt- 
ness; to distinguish minute differences; to 
discern widely diverse and even remote re- 
lations, and finally by the translation secure 
the use of idomatic English. 

You may be misled by an 
Chance easy chance to earn mone3\ 

to Large mercantile establish- 

Earn ments and great raanufac- 

rioney. turers are alwa3's on the 

look-out for bright 3'oung 
fellows whose hands are quick, whose eyes 
are alert, and who are supple and flexible 
etiough to adjust themselves to almost any 
position. The}^ ma}^ offer 3'ou a salary 
which is'sorel}^ tempting, and even dangle 
before you the promise of rapid promotion. 



and Go to Colleo-e. 



Remember that these qualities of youth 
constitute 3'our capital, and rather than 
employ them in adjusting- yourself to a 
routine of duties from which you will find 
it difficult to escape, you would better use 
them to enlarge your horizon and delay at 
least the treadmill of a clerkship, which 
perforce comes soon enough and lasts long- 
enough . Of w^hat avail, anywa}^, is a sal- 
ary as a recompense for youth, which comes 
twice to none, and a stunted brain and 
heart? Great business men are compelled 
to make sacrifices which I hope you may 
escape, but they do not get their names 
into the encyclopedias, where yours, if your 
youth is well spent, may be written. Ac- 
cording to Lodge, five great western states 
in ninety years produced twenty-seven men 
who are mentioned in the English and 
American encyclopedias, while little Mas- 
sachusetts, where high schools were first 
organized, had 2,686 authors, orators, phil- 
osophers, and builders of states in the 
same list. 



Stay in the High School 



Do not be persuade!, 
Do not either by the prevalent wor- 

Worship ship of the "self-made" 

the man that you could get on 

** Self-made*' without the rest of the 
rian. course. The g-lamour of 

some individual case may 
be thrown over you, but the statistics and 
the law of averages are both against it. 
There are habits of mind and conscience in 
the next two years of that high school 
course. It will give you the opportunity 
to bring the reasoning powers to bear upon 
the material of knowledge, and to bend 
your will persistently and patiently toward 
the accomplishment of a definite end. Even 
if the end in view is only the completion 
of the high school course, whose value is 
only partially understood, it will strengthen 
your purpose and stir your courage, and 
strong purposes backed by courage will soon 
aid; you to become what you so much ad- 
mire, a ".s-elf-made", man. Personally, I 
prefer a man who has been formed in large 



and Go to College. 



part by the influences of the home and the 
hig-h school and the church. And besides, 
if you beg-in your self-making" now by 
abandoning- the hig-h school course, in the 
same sense you will be a " self-made" man 
if you beg-in one, two, or three years later. 
Let me warn you also 
Boys against leaving- the hig-h 

in a small school, because, as you say, 

riinority the course is made up for 

in the g-irls rather than boys. You 

High School. say there are four g-irls to 
every boy, and that it does 
not ag-ree with a physically robust speci- 
men like yourself to be repressed and 
squeezed into a course for the physically 
frail and the intellectually feminine. Then, 
too, your teacher is a woman, and has no 
story to tell you of the " rush line," of the 
"eleven," or the victories of the "nine." 
Happily, as an omen for the future there 
are four g-irls to one boy in the hig-h schools 
all over the country, and the chances for 
the continuation of the same race of 



lo Stay in the High School 

thoug-htful, devoted Christian women as 
were our mothers is thereby g-reatly in- 
creased. There are more of them in the 
church, fewer of them sow wild oats and 
g-o wrong-. Perhaps you need repression; 
and nowhere will it be so easy to acquire 
self command and poise, and to retain purity 
and sincerity as in the high school, with a 
multiplicity of examples about you. 

But I have only warned you ag-ainst g-o- 
ing-. Let me now urg-e jou to stay. If the 
reasons why you ought not to go are not 
weighty and strong enough to detain you, 
perhaps the reasons for staying will. 

There is first of all the 
Opportunity opportunity to acquire a 
to good education. The high 

Acquire schools of to-da}- are almost 

a Good equal to colleges of the old- 

Education, en time. Eton and Har- 

row, founded respectively in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are 
the models on which pur schools are organ- 
ized, and it 's not over statement to say 



and Go to College. 



th:it the averag-e American hig-h ^school, 
after fifty years of development, is fully 
equal to Eton and Harrow. Yet Eton and 
Harrow made the men who made Eng^land, 
and the levelling" up process in education is 
more due to them than to the great uni- 
versities. 

Then, there is the vig-- 
Vigorous orous discipline which the 

Discipline. children of the rich as well 

as the children of the poor 
especially need. Too often there is no 
authority in the home. Many never have 
had lessons hi obedience, so necessary to 
be taug-ht, and so difficult to learn. But in 
the hig-h school you come under a system 
of authority, with power to enforce penal- 
ties for the violation of discipline. The 
teacher is at once advocate, prosecutor, 
jury and judg^e, and the rulevS and depriva- 
tion of privileg-es which follow their viola- 
tion are but types of the discipline and 
penalties which attach to broken statutes 
in the state and in the universe. Sooner or 



1 2 Stay in the High School 

later you are sure to be caught in webs of 
obligation, and the respect for law and 
authority you are now learning will make 
it the more easy for you to bear the sover- 
eignty to which you will be subject in the 
state and in the kingdom of heaven. 

And need I recall to you 
Identify that in the high school you 

Yourselves have ai^ opportunity to iden- 
with the tify yourselves with the peo- 

People. pie of the next decade and 

with the age to be such as 
you can have in no other wa}^ Only the 
exclusive classes would wish to separate 
their children from the great throng of 
coming citizens and it remains yet to be 
proved that the widest communit}- of inter- 
course in education is a disadvantage for 
any. If your social position seems secure 
because of wealth or birth the whole body 
of 'students need your gentlefucmly bearing 
as an example. But even more than they 
need you,, you need ,them. This is a land 
of strangely democratic influence and feel- 



and Go to College, 



13 



itig. There is no social position that is not 
likely to be altered or even reversed, and 
even now you may be making- for yourselves 
friends whose acquaintance will be of the 
utmost advantage in days to come. Every 
interest of your own future, as well as the 
future of all, is identified with your con- 
tinuance in the hig-h school, the g-reat col- 
leg-e of the common people, until you h^ve 
completed the course. 

II. (5o to College. 



But the weightiest reason 
Stay in the for staying in the high 
High School school remains yet to be 
that you given. It is that you may 

may go to be prepared to matriculate 

College. at college. In cases where 

the determination is already 
fixed to pursue a college course* of training, 
it may be well to substitute for the last 
year in the high school a year in some good 
seminary, like that at Wilbraham, Mass., 



41 Stay in the High School 

Kingston or Williamsport, Pa., or at the 
Academy in Evanston. But any such ad- 
justment will not chang-e the demand made 
upon you that in the four years from the 
time you finish the eighth grade of the 
public school you must be prepared to ma- 
triculate at college. In those four years, 
one by one the indolent, the indifferent and 
the incapable will drop from the ranks, and 
those who remain will constitute a select 
company, among whom with much greater 
difficulty you will be able to bear the palm. 
This one resolve ought to 
Qo to be firmly fixed as the rule 

College. for your immediate guid- 

ance. Until the college 
course is finished nothing else may legiti- 
mately intervene as a plan or alternative. 
As in the high school the will is persistent- 
ly pointed to complete the course, so now 
the will should even more definitely be riv- 
eted to accomplish not only matriculation 
but graduation. Lack of means, imperfect 
preparation, poor health, or filial duty may 



and Go to College. 1 5 

delay it, but vig-orous natures in some way 
or other will break throug-h all impedi- 
ments, and "either find a way or make 
one." You ought to go to college for your 
own sake. It will enlarge your mental 
girth, your intellectual stature, and the 
plenitude of 3'our powers. It will enable 
you to determine the handle of your being 
and grasp it; put you into the possession 
of ideas from which tools, ships, great 
books and great paintings are crystalized, 
and by which in some unexplainable way 
a York minster is organized out of cords of 
stone, and a mass of ore in the side of the 
hill, hung as a mountain in the air, and 
called a Brooklyn bridge. You ought to 
go to college in the interest of the general 
good. Every stalwart man added to the 
general mass leavens and lifts the whole. 
The church needs you at your best, and the 
salvation of the world waits for a genera- 
tion of men who are broad enough to com- 
prehend the great commission which Christ 
gave at Bethany. Even after college you 



1 6 Stay in the High School 

will be narrower than that beautiful God- 
man with whose birth the ag-es begin to 
number themselves anew, taking- from Him 
their solemn sounding- Anno Domini. 

What colleg-e should you 
What attend? Certainly not one 

College? where athletics embody the 

colleg-e •' spirit," nor one 
frequented by snobs and by spendthrift 
sons, who have more money than brains. 
However well to do you may be, you oug-ht 
to be encouraged in little economies, which 
you will find it difficult to practice there. 
Keep clear of colleges where the average 
expenses seem high. It is invariably more 
expensive than it looks, and there is small 
recompense in the fact that eminent men 
appear in the catalogue as professors; prob- 
ably tutors will meet you in the recitation 
room. Besides, in colleges of this sort, 
more than anywhere else, you may be in- 
fluenced to believe that college men are a 
superior sort of mortals, and above the 



and Go to College. 17 

plain homely laws and simple virtues by 
which you are finally to be judg-ed. 

Should there be a good 
Why not coUeg-e of liberal arts near 

Try a your home, g"o there. It 

College will enable you to be near 

Near at your mother, and as long- 

Home, as she lives you should re- 

joice if you can be near 
her. To travel long distances to attend 
a college in a great cit}^ is all wrong. It 
may be the best place for you and it may 
not. The great cities are pirates, so far as 
character is concerned, and in them every 
year many a noble argosy of faith is scut- 
tled and thousands of pure minded 3^outh 
compelled to walk the plank and sink into 
the ocean of sin's obscurity. The world 
will wish you well on commencement da}^ 
no matter to what school you go or where 
3^ou graduate. The day after commence- 
ment it will refuse to give you any place of 
trust or power, simply because 3^ou have 
graduated. Education you must have, but 



Stay in the High School 



nobody cares whether you get it at Harvard 
Colleg-e, like John Quincy Adams, or in a 
cabin, before a pine knot fire, like Abraham 
Lincoln. 

Other thing-s being" equal, 
Three the c.olleg-e to which you 

Essentials direct your steps ought to 

in a have resources comparable 

College. with other institutions of 

similar grade in the same 
state. It ought also to require and insist 
upon a high standard of scholarship for 
admission and graduation, and above all 
things it ought to be a Christian college. 
The pervciding atmosphere ought to be re- 
ligious — not dogmatic. It ought to recog- 
nize that transcendently above the intel- 
lectual man is man the spiritual. Too 
many men are occupving professorial chairs 
in American institutions who will parody 
as often as they may the st^de of the bril- 
liant .writer of the Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire, of w^hose argument Paley 
once said, "It is always difficult to answer 



and Go to College. 19 

a sneer," There is a piety of intellect as 
well as a piety of heart, and lack of the 
former among- the members of the faculty 
under whose educational influence you place 
yourself, is like offering- to receive into your 
arm a deadly virous for which there is no 
known antidote. The eternal verities are 
at stake — not for the world but for you. 
No sound nature will mock at religion or 
permit it to be mocked at, and 3^ou will do 
well to shun the man in colleg-e or .out of it 
who sneers at faith. He is crude in thought 
and coarse in feeling. 

Attendance at a denomi- 
The De= national colleg"e will serve 

nominational to make your religious 
College. duties and relations defin- 

ite. Practical faith requires 
you to participate in religious service and 
worship, and as you g-et the most g-ood from 
relations by fulfilling- them and not by be- 
traying or neg-lecting- them, so you will 
streng-then yourself immeasurably hj at- 
tending- a college where it is easy for you 



20 Stay in the High School 

to retain your church membership, and wor- 
ship in the manner and spirit to which 3'ou 
have been accustomed. The g^reat univer- 
sities of the country are larg-ely under the 
control of the different denominations. 
Protestantism in all its branches has col- 
leges that compare favorably with any state 
institution in endowment and equipment, 
and the close relations always observed be- 
tween the universities and the church still 
obtains. Mv personal debt to one of the 
great Methodist universities is so large that 
no reader will deny me the privilege of 
printing a full list of the colleges and uni- 
versities of the denomination and append- 
ing the names of the presidents, with fig- 
ures to show the value of their buildings 
and endowments. The ver}^ mention of 
ever}' one of these institutions will start 
feelings of gratitude similar to m^^ own in 
reverent faithful hearts all over the country. 
Kvery alumnus of these colleges and uni- 
versities will congratulate themselves that 
the}' graduated from them. 



a7id Go to College. 21 

Go to colleg-e, and if you 
Methodist are a member of the Ep- 

Colleges. worth League go to a Meth- 

odist college. 



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OTHER BOOKS 

By EDWIN A. SCHELL, D.D. 

General Secretary of the Epworth League, 

THE NEW GBNEKdTIOH; 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

CHAPLAIN McCABE. 

*'The New Generation, by Edwin A. Schell, is a 
volume thrilling- in energy. * * -^ it is an 
appeal from the heart of a young- man straig-ht to 
other young hearts." — Christian Advocate. 

"Fortunately the speaking style of the Secre- 
tary is preserved in his book. He has no use for 
long sentences or for platitudes. Dullness he 
avoids as though it were a sin. His style is figur- 
ative, illustrative, moving. He keeps one on the 
wing from start to finish." — Northwestern Chris- 
tian Advocate. 

16mo. Cloth. 218 pages. 
Special price to Epworth Leaguers, 60 cents. 



CONCERNING THE COLLECTION; 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

oharl.es e. piper, a. m. 

General Treasurer of the Epworth I^eague. 

The second book in the famous " I^eague at Work 
Series." Contains such startling chapters as "Over 
Against the Treasury;" " The Financial Group in 
the Apostolic College;" "John Wesley's Scheme 
of, Finance." 

18mo. Cloth. 107 pages. - 25 cents. 



CRANSTON & CURTS, 

57 Washington Street, Chicago, Ii<i.. 



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